It took her a year to get used to it. A year of walking into walls and people and things that she knew weren't where they last were when she was last there. She grew more and more frustrated with every stumble and fall. She was so tired of it she "accidentally" fell off the balcony of her room.
That's when her mother decided that she should be sent away. She was sent out of Arcadia, out of her realm and put somewhere no one would go looking for the cursed princess.
But of course they did. She was in a tower, it's always a tower, and she had tutors. She learned everything she would have if she were still living in the castle in Arcadia. She thought that maybe it was Polaris, the weather was cold half the year, not temperate and Arcadia's neighbors to the north were the only cold places she knew of aside from Azgeda and no one comes back from Azgeda.
Aurora Blake, she was Clarke's chef for years, also made her dresses, trying to support her children in secret. A widowed woman living alone with two children, the world was judgmental and cruel and she'd be executed. She was the only person Clarke spoke to since... not true, she spoke to her suitors. The men trying to save the princess and break the curse with 'true love's kiss' but all that did was give her the knowledge of their deaths. She didn't want them, she didn't want her father's either, but she gained the knowledge and told them. And everyone died. So she's kept her distance from Aurora, they talked and gained each other's trust and Clarke found out Aurora was deathly ill a week before she passed.
Clarke cried for the woman who cared so much about her children, who cared about Clarke that when Bellamy Blake showed up the next day, Clarke sent him away to let him mourn, but he refused, they needed the money more than ever now that his mother was dead and he was the only one looking after Octavia.
"What are you looking at?" he asked, the smell of freshly baked bread wafting into the room with him.
Clarke scoffed. "I don't know."
"You look out that window every day, I assume you'd know what's out there."
Clarke spun around and found his shadow, or what she thought might be his shadow and looked up at him. "I don't even know what I look like."
"You're—you're blind?" he asked. He's been there for six months and Clarke has tried to never show him her eyes.
"I was cursed when I was five. I was protecting my father and because of that love, it turned a spell that was supposed to kill him into a curse that blinded me."
"So you were thrown in a tower to await Prince Charming and his true love's kiss."
"Sardonic," Clarke smiled and turned back to the window. "We might get along."
"My mother spoke of you when she wasn't exhausted."
"I didn't work her too hard, did I?"
"No, no," he said and he sounded honest. "She'd leave you and go to the Inn and work there for a few hours."
"Is that what you do?"
"I—I tutor."
"I could ask my mother for a raise for you, you shouldn't have to overwork yourself."
"You're not the only one that's cursed, Princess."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm twenty four and unwed, no one will marry me and I can't be a professor if I'm unwed."
"I'll marry you," Clarke offered, knowing full well that her mother would never allow it. Hell, he might find her repulsive.
"Brave princess," he said sounding bemused. "I'm putting the bread on the table."
